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Türkiye: Jailed Mayor’s Lawyer Detained
(İstanbul, June 26, 2025) – An Istanbul court’s decision on June 19, 2025, to allow the detention of a leading defense lawyer for the jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu appears to be in reprisal for his legal representation of his client, Human Rights Watch and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project said today.
Turkish authorities should immediately release the lawyer, Mehmet Pehlivan, whose detention is based on vague witness statements pending an investigation into his alleged “membership of a criminal organization,” an offense carrying a possible sentence of two to four years in prison. Leading a criminal organization is one of the charges İmamoğlu was also detained on. The authorities have targeted at least three other lawyers defending İmamoğlu or his colleagues, initiating investigations against them for speaking to the media or allegedly attempting to interfere with a fair trial.
“It is alarming to see that the Erdoğan government is not only unlawfully attacking its main opposition presidential candidate, but also his defense lawyers,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Detaining Mehmet Pehlivan looks to be a retaliatory abuse of power, and he should be released immediately.”
Failure to release Pehlivan would not only constitute a violation of his right to liberty and security, but his right to discharge his professional duties as a lawyer and his client’s right to a fair trial, the organizations said.
Investigations targeting Pehlivan began days after İmamoğlu’s detention on March 23. Pehlivan had previously said at a February 25 news conference and elsewhere that the authorities’ move to revoke İmamoğlu’s university diploma to prevent him from being eligible as a presidential candidate had been arbitrary and unlawful. Police had previously arrested Pehlivan on March 28 allegedly on suspicion of money laundering. A court released him subject to an international travel ban.
The Istanbul prosecutor called Pehlivan again to testify on June 19. Pehlivan refused on the grounds that the justice minister had not granted permission to investigate him, a necessary prerequisite to opening investigations into lawyers. A court then accepted the prosecutor’s request to detain Pehlivan in the scope of the ongoing criminal investigation targeting İmamoğlu and over 200 officials and businesspeople working with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
Prosecutors are relying on witness statements by two suspects in the investigation under the “effective repentance” law, which potentially allows reduced sentences for helping with the investigation. The Istanbul Court ordered Pehlivan’s detention solely on the basis of these statements.
The witnesses alleged in vague and unsubstantiated terms that Pehlivan operated within what the prosecutor argues was a criminal network’s organizational hierarchy to orchestrate the appointment of particular lawyers to represent and meet with suspects, to attempt to access confidential investigation files and witness statements, and to pressure witnesses
Pehlivan faces another possible criminal investigation after members of Türkiye’s Higher Education Board filed a criminal complaint accusing him of defamation and insult on the basis of his public remarks about the board regarding the revocation of İmamoğlu’s university diploma. Progress in this investigation also depends on Justice Ministry authorization.
The prosecutors opened the investigations against the three other lawyers, alleging that they violated the confidentiality of the investigation by commenting on it in the media or that they allegedly attempted to influence a fair trial by briefing those who were under investigation.
Media reports indicate that the prosecutor’s office planned to investigate a fourth lawyer, but so far he has not been summoned to testify. One of the three lawyers under investigation also acted on behalf of Pehlivan. The three have been conditionally released under court orders that also imposed an international travel ban.
“The judicial harassment of lawyers like Mehmet Pehlivan, who represent clients facing politically motivated charges, is part of a broader pattern of shrinking democratic space and disregard of the rule of law in Turkey,” said Ayşe Bingöl Demir of the Turkey Litigation Support Project. “Lawyers are essential to upholding fundamental rights, and their strong public stance challenges government-led efforts to control the narrative. This crackdown signals that effective legal defense is seen as a threat, and unless firmly addressed by the international community, it risks losing more ground to the growing authoritarianism.”
UN Financing Development Meeting Should Advance Tax Justice
(Seville) – The United Nations conference on financing for development should help pave the way for meaningful progress on improving international tax cooperation to benefit everyone’s human rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch issued a database on tax references made by UN treaty bodies.
The fourth international meeting in development financing will begin on June 30, 2025, in Seville, Spain. The conference will bring together governments, international and regional organizations, civil society, financial and trade institutions, and businesses to agree on key reforms for financing at all levels, including global systemic barriers to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“Current flaws in tax systems and tax cooperation deprive governments of billions of dollars in revenue and undermine their capacity to deliver on their human rights obligations, such as to health and education, as well as to development,” said Lama Fakih, acting deputy executive director at Human Rights Watch. “The Financing for Development Conference in Seville is a chance for the international community to commit to meaningful change, including by supporting ongoing negotiations for a UN tax treaty.”
Ahead of the conference, on June 27, civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, will hold a day-long conference highlighting the links between taxation, public services, and development. Governments have already agreed to a draft outcome document for the Seville Conference. After the United States withdrew from negotiations, the agreement was adopted by consensus across the remaining 192 countries.
The conference is an opportunity to mobilize support for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which governments will be negotiating until 2027. The treaty process was initiated in 2022 by African countries, which face particularly consequential losses under the current tax system yet lack fair representation in international economic decision-making.
Even though countries have already agreed on an outcome document for the Seville conference, it will be a critical opportunity to discuss how to carry out these commitments. It will also be important to collectively address economic issues, including their human rights dimensions, amid global instability.
Equitable global tax rules are key to supporting “human rights economies” that align domestic and international economic decision-making with the realization of human rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) obliges its 172 states parties to use maximum available resources, including through international cooperation, to fulfill economic, social, and cultural rights, such as health, education, and social security.
Tax cooperation is critical to realizing those and other human rights obligations, by making it possible for governments to raise revenues to fund these rights and by reducing inequality within and between countries.
Several of the UN committees charged with assessing states’ compliance with human rights treaties have consistently urged states to align their tax systems with their human rights obligations, particularly those charged with interpreting and monitoring state compliance with the ICESCR and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
These committees have emphasized the importance of improving international cooperation and ensuring that their tax rules do not undermine other governments’ ability to meet their human rights obligations. Others have focused on more specific human rights dimensions of taxation, including how particular tax policies can either reinforce or effectively combat harmful patterns of discrimination within societies.
The Human Rights Watch database includes every reference to taxes made by these treaty bodies in their periodic assessments of states’ human rights performance since 2007. It categorizes them according to key themes, such as nondiscrimination, adequacy of available resources, and progressive taxation. Human Rights Watch found that since 2007, seven treaty bodies included some discussion of tax in 168 reviews of 98 states’ compliance with their human rights obligations.
Many governments face significant constraints raising revenues they need to improve the protection or progressive realization of human rights under existing international tax rules and practices, and many are also saddled with high debt servicing costs. This is a key driver of persistent human rights problems that deprive millions of people of critical health services or quality education.
Recent Human Rights Watch analyses of health spending globally and education spending in Africa, including in Egypt, show that most governments are failing to meet minimum spending on public services in order to realize rights, leading to high rates of school dropout and worsening employment conditions for public health workers and teachers.
Human Rights Watch research also documents that emerging labour models, such as platform or “gig” work, allow companies to avoid tax and social security contributions, undermining funding for public services and social protection while building billion-dollar industries.
While many Global North countries opposed efforts led by Global South countries for a commitment on a binding instrument to address debt, the agreed text for the conference includes several positive commitments for international tax cooperation.
These include a commitment “to engage constructively in the negotiations on a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation” and an assertion that “governments will make sure that multinational companies are taxed “where economic activity occurs.” The ability of multinational companies to shift profits to tax havens is a major source of revenue loss for governments. The draft outcome document also includes specific commitments for transparency and exchange of information critical to stemming tax abuse and avoidance.
“A strong and unified commitment to tax justice could finally help turn the tide on an international system that has faltered,” Fakih said. “Billions of people are suffering the consequences of severely underfunded public services, even as the wealth of the richest continues to soar.”
Ethiopia: Crackdown on Health Workers’ Protests
(Nairobi) – The Ethiopian authorities should immediately rescind the suspension of a prominent health professionals organization and meaningfully address public healthcare workers’ outstanding grievances, Human Rights Watch said today.
The government suspended the Ethiopian Health Professionals Association (EHPA) in early June 2025, following over a month of strikes by public healthcare workers for better working conditions and adequate pay. During the work stoppages, the authorities arbitrarily detained dozens of public healthcare workers across Ethiopia, either without charge or for peacefully exercising basic liberties. On May 30, the EHPA called for “an immediate stop” to “dismissals from work,” the use of “threats and intimidation,” and vacancy postings aimed at replacing striking professionals.
“Since May, the Ethiopian authorities have resorted to repressive tactics instead of addressing healthcare workers’ concerns about their livelihoods and safety,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should immediately lift the suspension of the Ethiopian Health Professionals Association and stop harassing healthcare workers.”
According to 2022 World Health Organization data, Ethiopia’s public healthcare spending is far below the international benchmarks of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared with the average of 1.2 percent for other low-income countries. A surgeon told Human Rights Watch that despite being in the upper echelons of the pay scale, he earned only US$80 a month. “I cannot even change my shoes,” he said. “I cannot even properly feed my child.”
The Ethiopian Authority for Civil Society Organizations (ACSO), a government body that oversees nongovernmental groups, suspended the EHPA, one of the first groups to endorse the public healthcare workers’ demands. The association took part in discussions organized by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission with the government in late May, which did not resolve the issues. On June 21, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed met with a select group of healthcare professionals.
The EHPA’s president, Yonatan Dagnaw, told the media that ACSO claimed that the association had not held a general assembly or submitted financial reports, and Yonatan was quoted as saying that the association had complied with the “guidelines and laws of the country.” He told the media that he believed that the suspension was linked to the health workers’ movement.
The healthcare workers carried out a month-long social media campaign. On May 13, they halted non-emergency services at public hospitals and medical teaching institutions across the country.
On May 15, the Health Ministry ordered striking workers to return to work or face legal action. In the statement, posted on social media, the ministry alleged that unnamed healthcare workers had spread false information about the work stoppages.
Beginning in early May, the authorities arrested, detained, and then released dozens of doctors, including Yonatan. On May 23, the Ethiopian Police Commission announced that it had detained 47 healthcare workers, including physicians and medical residents. An online healthcare workers’ group told Human Rights Watch that 148 healthcare workers had been arrested between early May and early June, though this figure could not be corroborated.
Several doctors, a doctor’s relative, and members of healthcare organizations described cases of harassment and arbitrary detention. For example, the authorities detained Dr. Mahlet Guush, a pathologist, for over three weeks in the Addis Ababa Police Commission headquarters, after the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast interviewed her regarding conditions facing medical professionals in the country. Officials arrested her without a warrant and searched her house, seizing two laptops and two mobile phones, a source said.
The authorities initially said in a letter to the First Instance Court that they were investigating her along with eight others, “most of them doctors,” for inciting violence and unrest in the country by allegedly coordinating with “anti-peace” groups. They also accused those detained of “abandoning their duties” and “conspiring to erode public trust in the government.” The police never charged the group members and released them all by June 12.
In Ethiopia’s embattled Amhara region, local militias arrested a physician and other hospital staff who had participated in a short protest and transferred them to police custody, where they spent a week in detention. The physician said he was arrested without a warrant and was never brought to court and charged. “I think they want to intimidate the health workers,” he said. “They simply said I was with the opposition armed forces around there.” After his release, the authorities threatened him and two other detained healthcare workers. “They said if there is anything again, you are in trouble,” he said. “It will be hard for you if something like this happens again.”
Although Ethiopia’s labor proclamation prohibits medical practitioners from striking, the authorities have not invoked it, as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine. The country’s civil servants’ proclamation, which regulates public healthcare workers, does not prohibit strikes. The Health Ministry accused healthcare workers who had gone on strike of violating the civil servants’ proclamation by committing misconduct that could harm their healthcare institution.
International human rights law, including International Labour Organization conventions, protects the right to strike but allows for some restrictions on that right under domestic law, including with regard to workers who provide essential services like health care. Article 42 of the Ethiopian Constitution broadly embraces that approach, affirming the right to strike but with some limitations.
Lawful restrictions on the right of healthcare workers to strike do not permit the authorities to harass, bring criminal charges against, or deprive healthcare workers of their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly protected under international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Ethiopian authorities won’t be able to tackle the country’s serious healthcare problems by suspending doctors’ associations or by harassing and jailing healthcare workers,” Bader said. “The government should instead address healthcare workers’ legitimate concerns through meaningful dialogue.”
Bangladesh: Foreign Aid Cuts Affect Rohingya Children’s Education
(Bangkok, June 26, 2025) – United States and other foreign donor cutbacks in humanitarian aid have worsened the already existing education crisis for 437,000 school-age children in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 3, 2025, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) suspended thousands of “learning centers” run by nongovernmental organizations in the refugee camps, due to lack of funding.
The only education currently in the Bangladesh refugee camps is at schools established by the Rohingya community without outside support or official recognition. Bangladesh’s interim government should urgently lift restrictions on education for Rohingya refugees, such as lack of accreditation, and donors should support community-led schools. The government should also permit Rohingya children to enroll in schools outside the camps.
“The US and other donor governments are abandoning education for Rohingya children after the previous Bangladesh government long blocked it,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The interim Bangladesh government should uphold everyone’s right to education, while donors should support the Rohingya community’s efforts to prevent a lost generation of students.”
In April and May, Human Rights Watch spoke with 39 Rohingya refugee students, parents, and teachers in the camps in the Cox’s Bazar District, 22 on Bhasan Char island also housing refugees, and 14 international and Bangladeshi teachers, humanitarian workers, and education experts. Most Rohingya fled persecution and wartime atrocities in Myanmar, where they are effectively denied citizenship and other rights.
In 2024, the US government provided US$300 million to respond to the Rohingya refugee crisis, over half of the total amount received by humanitarian agencies. But as of June 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump had slashed aid to $12 million. By April, the humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh – which funds the learning centers – had secured only about $22 million of its $72 million annual budget and was significantly reducing expenditures. Out of a target of 437,000 school-age children in the camps, about 304,000 were enrolled in the learning centers, now closed. UNICEF aimed to reopen the learning centers it funded for classes 6 and above by June 29, and encouraged nongovernmental organizations NGOs to reopen lower classes if they could find other sources of funding.
Rohingya refugees said that community-led schools offered higher-quality education than the learning centers. They hired teachers who had completed most of their upper secondary schooling, and classes had multiple teachers who specialized in different subjects.
The community-led schools, unsupported by government or private donor funding, charge parents monthly tuition fees ranging from around $0.50 for class 1 up to $5 for class 12, a barrier to enrollment for some families. One refugee said: “Parents want to send kids to community-led schools but can’t afford the fees, so the only options are [learning centers]. But when they see that the kids aren’t learning, they send the child to work.”
“There are over 100 [community-led] schools [in the Cox’s Bazar camps],” a principal said. “But no humanitarian [groups] are supporting us, because the Bangladesh authorities don’t recognize us.”
Teachers said the lack of certification, which affected learning centers as well as community-led schools, also undermined students’ hopes to build a better future upon eventual return to Myanmar. “If you made it to grade 12, but without a certificate, you will have to start all over from the beginning,” a community-school teacher said.
Lack of education opportunities has also increased children’s vulnerability to spiraling violence by armed groups and criminal gangs in the Cox’s Bazar camps, including abductions, recruitment, and trafficking. Abductions of children were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters to go to school, refugees said. Protection monitors reported 51 child abductions in the first quarter of 2025.
With the learning centers shut down due to the funding crisis, whether or not funding is found to re-open them, the interim Bangladesh government and donors should recognize and fund community-led schools to increase their capacity, Human Rights Watch said.
The interim Bangladesh government should recognize community-led schools, and the United Nations and aid agencies should include Rohingya educators in decision-making and leadership roles, Human Rights Watch said. Recognition of Rohingya-led schools could encourage donor support and help achieve better instruction for more students.
Bangladesh should follow the example of countries, including Türkiye, that have accredited and certified education for refugee children, including refugee-led schools teaching the curricula of their countries of origin.
Under international human rights law, all children have the right to quality education, without discrimination, regardless of their residency or migration status. International standards for refugee education recommend that refugees meaningfully participate in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of programs.
“The previous Bangladesh government for years blocked education for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children because they were refugees,” Van Esveld said. “The interim government should reject old policies and support education without discrimination for all children.”
For additional details, please see below.
Background
Educating Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Bangladesh hosts over one million Rohingya refugees, 750,000 of whom fled the Myanmar military’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in 2017. An additional 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since mid-2024 to escape hostilities between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group that now controls most of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Because Rohingya in Rakhine State live under apartheid and persecution, children’s access to education has eroded and is now almost nonexistent, with schools closed due to conflict.
Bangladesh’s national security adviser has said that the interim government’s policy is to repatriate Rohingya to Myanmar, even though repression and violence make safe, dignified, and voluntary returns impossible. The Bangladesh government’s restrictions on education will undermine Rohingyas’ ability to rebuild their lives when returns are possible. “If they don’t get an education here,” said a humanitarian education worker, “when they go back home they will have a huge learning gap.”
The Bangladesh government has prohibited Rohingya refugee children who have arrived since 2017 from enrolling in public or private schools, learning Bangla, or studying a formal curriculum, to prevent their long-term integration in Bangladesh. Humanitarian agencies initially responded by establishing “learning centers” in the Cox’s Bazar camps without a set curriculum. By 2018, Rohingya refugee teachers in the camps had also created informal community-led schools, teaching the Myanmar curriculum.
Additional learning centers have since been set up in Bhasan Char island’s reinforced-concrete cyclone shelters.
In 2020, the Bangladesh government permitted the learning centers to introduce the Myanmar curriculum informally. These centers were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Community-led schools continued teaching until late 2021, when authorities forcibly closed them for lacking authorization. About 100 community-led schools have since reopened.
Meanwhile, by early 2025, humanitarian organizations had scaled-up use of the Myanmar curriculum and introduced an accelerated learning program for out-of-school children, before having to suspend activities in June due to US funding cuts.
The learning centers, operated by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), were tuition-free. The previous Bangladesh government restricted Rohingya teachers to paid “volunteer” positions and required the learning centers to be managed by professional staff from Bangladeshi organizations. Their educational programs were negotiated between the UN and the government. In Cox’s Bazar, Rohingya “volunteer” teachers taught five subjects, while Bangladeshi nationals taught English. The Bhasan Char centers only used Rohingya teachers. Rohingya teachers earned 13,000 Bangladeshi taka (US$106) per month.
Community-led schools charge monthly tuition fees, and teachers earn 3,000 to 8,000 taka ($25 to $65) per month. Many of these teachers had primary jobs with humanitarian agencies, which was their main source of income. Bangladesh’s interim government allows the community-led schools to operate before 8 a.m. and after 4 p.m., outside the learning centers’ hours.
Students and teachers described greater absenteeism at learning centers, where fewer students continued to upper-secondary level. The Cox’s Bazar learning centers, before the US cutbacks, had only 57 students in class 11, the most senior class offered. On Bhasan Char, where the authorities have transferred thousands of Rohingya refugees, the learning centers had 11,000 students, but only 6 in class 9, the most senior class available there.
Rohingya students and teachers at both community-led schools and learning centers, and education experts said the lack of accredited education or pathways to higher education contributed to students leaving education before completing secondary school. Refugees described family members who fled the refugee camps and risked potentially deadly overseas journeys, including to find formal education in other countries, or sent remittances to pay fees at community-led schools in the camps.
Refugee Participation in Education Programs
The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards for Education, developed by leading governmental and nongovernmental agencies, recommend meaningful refugee community participation in humanitarian education responses. International human rights conventions enshrine “the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions” and to choose schools that “ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”
Rohingya students, parents, and teachers interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed greater satisfaction with community-led schools than the learning centers. However, Rohingya “master-trainers,” who trained teachers at learning centers, said Bangladesh’s policy restricting Rohingya to paid “volunteer” roles limited their ability to improve quality.
“If you want to develop a society you must involve people from the society,” said a community-led school principal. “[Humanitarian NGOs] conduct many meetings and say ‘We prioritize your feedback,’ but don’t implement it.”
A master-trainer on Bhasan Char said, “We have no decision-making authority.… All the quality-assurance people in education are Bangladeshi, but they don’t know the [Myanmar] curriculum, so they can’t improve the system.”
A master-trainer in Cox’s Bazar said a Bangladeshi teacher habitually “came and signed in at the school but then left.” When “I tried to say something, it made problems, so now I don’t say anything,” the master-trainer said. “The [NGO] office prohibited us from managing the host-community teachers.”
Instruction Quality
A 2019 research-institute study found that teachers at community-led schools had “invaluable” knowledge of the Myanmar education system and the Rohingya and Burmese languages, but had not been “meaningfully engaged” by the humanitarian education sector.
Rohingya students, parents, and educators said that learning center teachers were less qualified and typically taught five subjects, versus specialized teachers at community-led schools. One mother said, “[I]f there was no community-led learning our children would not improve at all.”
Teachers contrasted community-led schools, which paid teachers according to their qualifications, with learning centers, which paid primary and secondary teachers and teacher-mentors the same amount. Master trainers, the highest education-sector position available to Rohingya, were paid 15,000 taka ($123) a month. A Rohingya man with a university degree, who established a community-led school, said that one of his students was hired as a master trainer at a learning center.
Humanitarian planning reports have described the lack of educated Rohingya refugees, due to discriminatory restrictions against Rohingya education in Myanmar, as an obstacle to scaling up quality education. The humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh provided trainings to teachers at learning centers, including on subjects in the Myanmar curriculum, monthly lesson planning, and preventing and reporting child abuse, and to Rohingya teacher mentors (responsible for multiple learning centers) and master trainers.
However, teachers and principals at community-led schools said that more educated Rohingya often chose not to teach in the learning centers. They contend that a better-organized system, with Rohingya participation in management decisions, teachers paid according to their qualifications, and classes taught by teachers with subject-matter expertise, would attract more and better teachers and reach more students.
The Rohingya interviewed said that quality of instruction is also linked to greater retention of students in secondary and upper-secondary levels at community-led schools than at learning centers. “When I started in class 4 there were 20 students, now only five remain,” said a class 8 learning-center student. On Bhasan Char, a community-led school with 100 students had more students in classes 9 to 11 than all the learning centers, with 11,000 students. Two teachers said that they asked NGOs if they could teach community-led school classes in unused rooms in the cyclone shelters used by learning centers but were told that they would be fired if they continued to teach in the community-led school.
Testing and Grade Promotion
Learning center students took end-of-year tests in June 2024, a process organized by UNICEF where, to ensure fairness, tests were marked by teachers from different learning centers. However, the results were not distributed until May 2025, after students had been promoted to the next class. Two teachers said their managers pressured them to fill in students’ marks on their “progress cards,” without knowing the marks by the start of the academic year in August 2024. Human Rights Watch observed marks on several students’ progress cards, before the marks had been distributed.
Some tests, marked by teachers from other learning centers, were clearly mistaken, teachers said. A class 5 teacher said he had a student “who can’t write Burmese, and he got the highest mark in Burmese. The best student got a much lower mark.” Another teacher said the top marks in his class went to a student who did not know the material and attended classes “at most, five days per month,” because he worked to help his parents earn income.
Due to the budget cuts, the humanitarian education sector cancelled the 2025 learning assessments.
By contrast, about 50 Rohingya community-led schools in the Cox’s Bazar camps established an “examination board” to ensure fair exams, which will next be held in March 2026. Community-led schools had previously held tests and distributed the marks by the start of the next academic year. Passing the previous class is required to advance, creating “motivation for the learners to work hard,” a master teacher said.
Upper Secondary School Classes for Adolescent Girls
Few Rohingya girls continue in education after age 13, in part because of parents’ concerns about the risk of violence including abduction and sexual assault. To mitigate these concerns, the humanitarian sector established “community-based learning facilities,” where female teachers used their own shelters as classrooms to teach girls living nearby. However, none of the learning centers in the Cox’s Bazar camps offered lessons higher than class 5.
In one camp with 28 such facilities, the highest level offered was class 2, a master trainer said. On Bhasan Char, 13 female students, ages 13 to 18, 2 of whom are married with children, are currently studying class 3 at a learning center. However, there is a need for girls to have safe and secure access both to primary and secondary-level classes, teachers said.
By contrast, in one Rohingya community-led school with 175 female students, which used individual shelters as classrooms across 5 camps in Cox’s Bazar, girls are studying in class 9 and 10 of the Myanmar curriculum. One student in class 10, aged 14, said she hopes to complete secondary education and continue to university. A woman now working at a continuing education program said she and six female classmates started class 7 in a community-led school “and all seven of us completed class 12.”
Child marriage of girls in the refugee camps is widespread due to lack of education, income, and space in overcrowded shelters, according to a group interview with six women from various camps in Cox’s Bazar. Improving access to quality education for girls would help prevent child marriage, one woman said. Another woman added that learning centers carried out community outreach on the importance of girls’ education but said this was undermined by the perceived poor quality of education at learning centers.
Importance of Continuing and Higher Education
Without accredited education or the ability to leave the camps, it is impossible for Rohingya students in Bangladesh to pursue higher education.
Most of those interviewed said that the lack of professional and educational pathways decreased students’ motivation and increased dropouts and discipline problems. A teacher at a community-led school in Camp 17, with 300 students, said: “Students are not seeing their future, so there is no discipline. If teachers say something and students don’t agree, they might just leave and say we are wasting our money.”
A master trainer contrasted his youth in Myanmar, before restrictions blocked Rohingya from university education, and in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. “When I was a student in class 2, we already dreamed of going to university and professions. But here … there are no goals, they don’t see anything in the future. If there is no dream, there is no reason for hard work.”
One positive initiative in the camps is a six-month learning program for Rohingya aged 15-24, run , with an 83 percent completion rate, according to staff. However, the program’s capacity is limited. About 1,000 Rohingya had completed the program and 1,000 more are enrolled while a 2022 UN assessment found more than 306,000 youth aged 18-24 in the camps.
A Bangladeshi education expert said that the government should allow universities to enroll Rohingya students and allow internet access for online learning including higher education. Some students manage to enroll in online higher education in the camps but contravene official policy to do so.
Child Abduction and Recruitment by Armed Groups
Abductions for ransom or by armed groups of children in the Cox’s Bazar camps were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters, including to go to school, camp residents said. A learning program for 15–24-year-olds stopped operating for a month because “students had been abducted, children and adults,” the director said. A father said that UN agencies were unable to keep children safe, and regretted that his 8-year-old son, and his daughters in class 5 and class 4, had all dropped out of community-led schools due to fear after attempted attacks or assaults.
In the first quarter of 2025, UN protection monitors reported 38 boys and 13 girls were kidnapped or abducted in the camps. In group interviews conducted in April 2025, 14 people in the Cox’s Bazar camps described six cases of child abduction for ransom in 2024 and 2025, in one of which the child abducted was killed. They said none of the cases had a meaningful police investigation.
Human Rights Watch documented cases in which Rohingya armed groups recruited and used a 13-year-old boy as a porter and cleaner in Myanmar, and used a 10-year-old boy to smuggle yaba, a methamphetamine, across checkpoints. The prevalence of child recruitment, a humanitarian official said, was linked to the lack of education: “[Children] are in this small area, with no certificates, no future. Ask them about their dreams and they might laugh. [Armed groups are] the way to status and some money.”
By contrast, on Bhasan Char, Human Rights Watch interviewed three refugee families who had relocated to the island after being targeted by armed groups in the mainland camp. All the people interviewed said there was no armed group activity on the island, unlike the mainland camps, and that Bangladesh authorities clamped down periodically on smuggling groups.
Bhasan Char Island
“The main reasons for dropouts are lack of quality education, [to go] to work, and to go back to [the mainland] camp,” a teacher said. A student at a learning center said that three of the four teachers he had last year had fled. The journey to the mainland can prove fatal: during the rainy season in 2024, two or three people drowned each month as they took boats to reach the mainland, a teacher said.
There are currently no specialized education programs for children with disabilities in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar or on Bhasan Char island. Groups specializing in support for children with disabilities used to work in Cox’s Bazar but closed their programs due to funding cuts.
Turkmenistan: Imprisoned Activist Faces New Dubious Charges
(Berlin, June 25, 2025) – Turkmenistan’s authorities have brought new charges against an imprisoned activist who had been scheduled for release earlier in June 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should immediately and unconditionally free the activist, Murad Dushemov, and drop all abusive efforts to extend his detention.
Dushemov was jailed in 2021, following an arbitrary prosecution for criticizing the authorities, and was due to be released on June 14, 2025. But on June 10, authorities transferred him from the prison colony in Seydi, Lebap province, where he was serving his sentence, to a pretrial detention facility in Turkmenabat, also known as Abdy Shukur prison.
“Dushemov has already suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice due to his peaceful activism,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Turkmen authorities should immediately release him and not subject him to another bogus prosecution and unfair trial.”
The government of Turkmenistan has an appalling human rights record, is extremely repressive, and tolerates no dissent. It has unlawfully imprisoned people for exercising their right to free speech. Individuals imprisoned on politically motivated charges experience abysmal prison conditions and ill-treatment. Torture and incommunicado detention are a serious concern. Dozens remain victims of enforced disappearances.
In 2021, Dushemov published videos criticizing the Turkmen government’s policies and challenging its official narrative related to the Covid-19 pandemic. He demanded access to accurate information about the situation and questioned restrictions imposed by the authorities who falsely claimed Covid-19 was not present in the country.
On June 18, 2025, the Netherlands-based outlet Turkmen.news reported that Dushemov’s whereabouts were unknown and that he may be facing new charges, based on a dubious allegation by another prisoner that Dushemov had broken his arm.
The timing and source of the new charges, combined with the opaque nature of Turkmenistan’s prison system, strongly suggests the charges are fabricated, Human Rights Watch said. In at least several instances, Turkmen authorities have previously brought fabricated charges against people in their custody to extend their prison’s sentence.
On June 21, Turkmen.news reported that the head of the Abdy Shukur prison confirmed to Dushemov’s mother, who had gone to look for him at the facility the day before, that Dushemov is being held there and was expected to face a new trial in about 10 days. The prison chief said the new charges stem from an alleged “fight with cellmates.” He also told her that a state-appointed lawyer has been assigned to the case but refused to provide the lawyer’s contact information or allow her to visit her son.
The Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) reported that on June 25, a lawyer told Dushemov’s relatives that his trial would take place soon, but had no information on the charges against him or the exact date of the hearing. TIHR also corroborated the claims that shortly before Dushemov’s sentence was set to end, another inmate was placed in his cell, who falsely claimed that Dushemov assaulted him.
In June 2021, Turkmen authorities fined Dushemov 100 Turkmen manat (US$28) for allegedly using profanity in public places the day after he published a video requesting information about the “country’s epidemiological situation” and asked questions about the Covid-19 vaccination requirements in one of Ashgabat’s hospitals.
On July 7, 2021, authorities sentenced Dushemov to a 15-days arrest for “petty hooliganism,” an administrative offence, after he had blocked a road with his car. The arrest followed a verbal dispute at a checkpoint when officers barred Dushemov from leaving Ashgabat, claiming he lacked a certificate proving that he had tested negative for Covid-19. Police reportedly refused to provide any legal basis for demanding such a certificate and held him at the checkpoint for four hours.
On July 22, 2021, when Dushemov’s detention ended, authorities did not free him but instead initiated a criminal investigation against him. Three weeks later, a court in Dashoguz sentenced Dushemov to a four-year prison term on trumped-up charges of extortion and intentional infliction of moderate bodily harm. The charges stemmed from a manufactured fight with a cellmate during his 15-day jail sentence and from an alleged complaint by a hospital doctor who accused Dushemov of attempted extortion in exchange for not publishing a video filmed in the hospital. Dushemov denied all charges.
Turkmen authorities have a long record of persecuting people they suspect of disloyalty to the government, Human Rights Watch said.
Among those currently serving politically motivated sentences is Mansur Mingelov, arrested in 2012 shortly after he had spoken out about beatings he experienced and witnessed during two weeks in police custody. He was sentenced later that year to 22 years in prison on bogus narcotics charges.
Pygambergeldy Allaberdyev, a lawyer sentenced to six years in prison in 2020 on bogus allegations of connections with activists abroad and pardoned in December 2022, remains subject to a five-year travel ban. In January 2025, authorities barred Nurgledy Khalykov, a Turkmen.news stringer, who in 2024 had completed a four-year prison term on fabricated fraud charges, from traveling to the UAE for work.
Authorities twice prevented Soltan Achilova, an activist and independent journalist, from travelling to Geneva for a human rights award ceremony. In November 2024, authorities forcibly hospitalized her on false pretenses and in November 2023, border officials deliberately damaged Achilova’s passport and refused to allow her through passport control.
In March 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Committee in its concluding observations on Turkmenistan’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, expressed deep concern “about reports of the widespread practice of persecution of civil society representatives … who peacefully exercise their freedom of expression…,” and “about numerous reports that politically motivated criminal trials occur behind “closed doors.” It called for the release of Dushemov and Mingelov.
In May 2023, Dushemov and three other prisoners wrote to the UN office in Turkmenistan, stating their cases were fabricated, and their rights continued to be violated in detention. The prisoners asked UN representatives to visit them in custody. In response to Turkmen.news’ written questions about the letter, the UN resident coordinator for Turkmenistan stated that he “is in contact with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva on this issue.”
Turkmenistan’s international partners should press Turkmenistan to end Dushemov’s baseless detention and immediately free him and others imprisoned in apparent retaliation for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said. They should also press Turkmen authorities to stop persecuting people, including through arbitrary travel bans, in retribution for their peaceful activism.
“Turkmenistan should free Dushemov and stop using the justice system to punish peaceful dissent,” Denber said. “We are witnessing yet again that rather than rectify an injustice, the government is doubling down on its wholesale disregard for rights and the rule of law, and other governments should not ignore it.”
New Global Coalition Urges Rights-Based Climate Relocation Policies
Last week, Human Rights Watch hosted the launch of the “Coalition on Dignified Climate-related Planned Relocation,” a new global alliance working to ensure communities forced to plan relocations due to climate change can do so on their own terms and with dignity.
Over two days in New York City, more than 40 relocating community leaders, researchers, and advocates from across the globe—including those from Panama, Fiji, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Sweden, Germany, and the United States—came together to exchange lessons and build a collective strategy.
From these discussions, it was clear that while climate-related relocation is a measure of last resort, it is already happening across the world, often without government support. Few countries have national policies in place to guide these processes; even fewer have rights-respecting policies that center on community leadership.
Despite their different political contexts, leaders of coastal communities shared remarkably similar stories of having to face existential challenges and holding their governments accountable on their own. Their experiences illustrated that planned relocations can be fraught processes that threaten the rights of people and their communities—including to an adequate standard of living, housing, and land—when governments fail to support those at risk.
Grounded in these sobering realities, coalition members spent two days sharing lessons learned from different relocation processes and governance strategies. They also imagined how, if well-supported and anchored around a community’s own visions for the future, planned relocations could be a successful adaptation solution of last resort.
Coalition members focused around two main goals:
Continuing to build cross-context solidarity and learn from one another.Advocating for every country with a coastline to adopt a rights-respecting relocation policy or governance framework.The coalition affirmed that the tools already exist; what’s needed is political will. It is critical to move from principles to practice and to ensure that the most affected communities lead the way. As climate impacts intensify, planned relocation may become an unavoidable reality for more communities. Governments need to take climate relocation seriously, and this coalition intends to help make policies and practices more rights-respecting and community-centered.
UN Human Rights Office Calls for Action on ‘Transnational Repression’
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Office issued its first ever guidance paper on “transnational repression,” aimed at increasing awareness and understanding of this expanding global issue.
Transnational repression occurs when governments reach across their borders to stifle criticism and dissent. It can take the form of online harassment, surveillance, enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, and physical attacks, including killings. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented how this phenomenon is often downplayed or ignored.
The UN paper notes that victims of transnational repression often face barriers accessing protection and remedies. Authorities in some host countries fail to ensure adequate protective measures, but others have actively facilitated foreign governments’ repression of people seeking refuge.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, UN human rights experts, and member states have increasingly been raising the alarm over this practice.
In 2024, following a landmark report by the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression on transnational repression of journalists, dozens of countries from all regions issued a statement condemning transnational repression, committing to supporting those targeted, and holding perpetrators to account.
In his global update earlier this year, the UN high commissioner for human rights noted the rising number of “egregious examples” of transnational repression around the world and called for all states to adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.
The new UN guidance reminds states of their responsibility to respect and protect rights and refrain from committing, enabling, or condoning acts of transnational repression. It offers concrete recommendations to governments for raising awareness and addressing the protection and accountability gap, including establishing mechanisms for remedies and reparations for victims and issuing a moratorium on exporting surveillance “spyware” tools.
Governments should also work together to ensure a coordinated international response to transnational repression that offers robust protection to those at risk.
At the current session of the UN Human Rights Council, states will have opportunities to reference transnational repression in a number of relevant resolutions under negotiation: notably on the protection of journalists and of civil society space. This would help acknowledge the concerns expressed by the UN Human Rights Office and independent rights experts, and build awareness and focus attention on coordinated prevention and remedy.
It is time for a concerted international effort to better understand and address the serious rights impacts of transnational repression and to ensure protection and justice for those targeted.
Haiti: Displacement Hits Record as Security Efforts Fall Short
(Washington, DC) – One year since deployment of the first personnel of the United Nations-authorized Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti, violence and human rights abuses continue to rise, Human Rights Watch said today.
Ongoing shortfalls in personnel, funding, and equipment have severely limited the MSS’s ability to contain violence, which has intensified in Haiti’s capital and beyond, leaving at least 2,680 people killed and 957 injured, according to UN figures. UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ latest report documented an alarming increase in grave violations against children from 383 in 2023 to 2,269 in 2024. This includes a twelvefold increase in documented cases of recruitment and use of children in criminal groups and an even larger increase in rape and sexual violence against children.
Violence has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, pushing the number of internally displaced people to nearly 1.3 million, the highest ever recorded in Haiti, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“Each day, violence forces hundreds of Haitians to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs to makeshift sites or other cities, where they remain at risk and have little to no access to food and water,” said Nathalye Cotrino, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “UN member countries should immediately reinforce the MSS. The UN Security Council should end its inaction and transform the MSS into a full-fledged UN mission that has the personnel, resources, and mandate to effectively protect the Haitian people.”
In late April and early May 2025, Human Rights Watch visited Cap-Haïtien, the capital of Haiti’s Northern department. With support from the National Human Rights Defense Network (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, or RNDDH) and Haiti’s Ombudsperson Office, researchers interviewed 33 internally displaced people who had recently fled Port-au-Prince, its metropolitan area, and other municipalities. They also met with humanitarian workers, diplomats, and representatives of Haitian civil society and UN agencies.
Since early 2025, criminal groups have escalated attacks in previously safe areas including Port-au-Prince, its metropolitan area, as well as in the municipalities of Mirebalais and Saut-d’Eau in the Centre department, and Petite Rivière in Artibonite. This violence—including clashes with self-defense brigades, often operating with the involvement of police officers, and confrontations with security forces—has forced more than 245,000 people to flee their homes, according to the IOM.
Many of Human Rights Watch’s interviewees were university students or professionals with stable jobs and financial resources, including homes or small businesses, who had been able to live largely unaffected by violence until recently.
“I was living well in my neighborhood, it was peaceful. Then suddenly, security problems started,” said a 23-year-old civil engineering student who was displaced from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haïtien in March after an attack that killed his brother. “Men came, a lot of bandits. They started shooting. My family and I ran out of the house. While crossing the street, [my 19-year-old brother] was hit by a bullet. [T]he bullet went through his head … after that, we came to Cap-Haïtien. In my neighborhood, no one is left, only the bandits.”
During recent attacks, several interviewees said criminal groups used apps to share audio messages warning residents that they had only a few hours to flee.
A 38-year-old plumber from Port-au-Prince who is the father of a six-month-old baby, told Human Rights Watch: “The bandits sent messages to warn us.… We knew they were coming, and they came. They stormed in and ransacked [the neighborhood]. The police deserted. They killed people, burned homes. I lost my house. We saw lifeless bodies everywhere, and there was a nauseating stench. You had to run through it.… We had to leave to save ourselves.”
International human rights workers reported that criminal groups set fire to homes on the outskirts of targeted neighborhoods to force residents—and, at times, the police—to flee.
According to UN officials, these tactics appear aimed at forcibly depopulating areas to allow criminal groups to expand their presence and pave the way for them to take control of other areas.
Many interviewees were displaced multiple times, fleeing first to other areas of Port-au-Prince or nearby cities before seeking refuge in Cap-Haïtien. They traveled by bus, facing risks along the way as criminal groups control key routes, operate checkpoints, and extort passengers.
A 37-year-old woman from Cabaret, an area north of Port-au-Prince long controlled by criminal groups, told Human Rights Watch that after being displaced multiple times in the same area, she fled to Mirebalais to protect her 14-year-old daughter from the risk of sexual violence. However, in late March, after criminal groups attacked Mirebalais, burning homes and killing several people, she fled again. “I took refuge in a church in Hinche [a nearby city]. My husband had gone out to work, painting a house. I haven’t heard from him since ... I just hope he isn’t dead. I left Hinche because there were rumors about an imminent attack.… Now we are here [in Cap-Haïtien] but I fear the violence will follow us.”
Displaced people, now approximately 11 percent of Haiti’s population, are sheltering across all ten departments. Fifty-five percent of the displaced are women and girls; most are staying with host families or in improvised sites where they face severe shortages of food, water, health care, and other essential services. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, over 8,400 people in makeshift displacement sites are facing famine.
Conditions in makeshift displacement sites across Haiti are increasingly dire, with over 246 informal sites reported as of early June 2025, each hosting an average of 2,000 people. Many people are sheltering in overcrowded schools or public spaces, facing severe protection risks and what Haiti’s Office of the Ombudsperson has recently called “inhuman” conditions.
The scale of the displacement crisis has overwhelmed existing capacities. The UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan, which aims to assist 3.9 million Haitians out of the 6 million in need of humanitarian aid, is only eight percent funded. The transitional government’s failure to develop a national, comprehensive plan for supporting internally displaced people has also hindered efforts to coordinate and sustain an effective response.
The international community isn’t doing enough to support the MSS’s efforts to protect Haitians from the criminal groups displacing them, Human Rights Watch said.
Although eight countries notified the UN secretary-general in 2024 of their intent to contribute personnel to the MSS, only Kenya, which leads the mission, Guatemala, El Salvador, Jamaica, and The Bahamas have deployed forces. Their combined deployment totals just 991 officers, well below the expected 2,500.
The MSS still requires additional funding to sustain operations through December and establish the remaining 9 of the 12 planned operational bases critical for securing territory and consolidating its presence.
The UN Security Council should ensure that the UN-backed MSS receives the personnel and resources needed to fulfill its mandate, and agree on steps to transform the mission into a full-fledged UN operation capable of protecting human rights and preventing a further escalation of violence, Human Rights Watch said.
“Violence in Haiti is getting worse by the day,” said Cotrino. “The Security Council should end its waiting game and make the MSS a UN mission. How many more killings, rapes, kidnappings, and child recruitments will it take for governments to wake up and realize what needs to happen?”
South Korea: Human Rights Issues for New Government
(Seoul) – South Korea’s new government should adopt measures to address human rights problems in the country and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to President Lee Jae-myung. It is critically important for the government to bolster democratic institutions, end entrenched discrimination, protect digital rights, and promote North Koreans’ human rights.
President Lee took office on June 4, 2025, after winning the presidential elections following the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk-yeol for imposing martial law in December 2024.
“South Korea’s election cycle followed mass protests in support of accountable government,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch. “President Lee Jae-myung should engage constructively on the range of human rights issues facing the country, including protecting freedoms of expression, assembly, and the media, strengthening digital rights and social protections, and addressing systemic discrimination against women and marginalized groups.”
The South Korean government should act to safeguard civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, Human Rights Watch said. These include ensuring the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and the press. The government should also pass a comprehensive anti-discrimination law protecting women and girls, older people, people with low socio-economic status, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, people with disabilities, migrants, and North Korean escapees.
Other priorities include closing the gender pay gap and combating digital sex crimes; ensuring that artificial intelligence regulations protect privacy and children’s rights; and strengthening pensions and social protections. The government should also prevent the misuse of emergency, security, and defamation laws to silence dissent. It should advance climate justice; reduce fossil fuel dependency, notably new liquified natural gas projects, and increase opportunities to generate renewable energy.
The government should also propose legislation to require companies to prevent, mitigate, and remediate actual and potential adverse human rights, labor, environmental, and climate impacts, and promote North Korean human rights through full implementation of the 2016 North Korean Human Rights Act.
“President Lee Jae-myung should recognize that taking office presents both opportunities to advance the rights of the South Korean people and possible pitfalls should existing rights concerns fail to be addressed,” Yoon said. “The new government’s actions will not only affect the rights of people in South Korea, but also those of North Koreans and many others around the world.”
Rwanda: Opposition Leader Arrested
(Nairobi) – The Rwandan authorities rearrested Victoire Ingabire, the head of an unregistered political party, on June 19, 2025, as a part of a drawn-out trial that targets political opposition figures, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should release Ingabire and other people detained on politically motivated grounds and guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.
Ingabire was arrested at her home in the capital, Kigali. A tweet by the Rwanda Investigation Bureau said that the Public Prosecutor's Office requested her to be arrested in connection with the ongoing trial of members of her party. It said she is being prosecuted for forming a criminal group and planning activities aimed at inciting public disorder.
“Ingabire’s arrest and this trial are only the most recent example of the dangers of political opposition in Rwanda,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. “The prosecuting authorities’ message is clearly that if you dare to seek political office outside of the ruling party, you risk imprisonment.”
Ingabire previously spent nearly eight years in prison, from 2010 to 2018, following a politically motivated trial. In 2012, Ingabire was sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to undermine the established government and denying the country’s 1994 genocide after she sought to contest the 2010 presidential elections. She was pardoned and released in September 2018. In March 2024, a Kigali court rejected Ingabire’s request to expunge her criminal record and allow her to run in the July 2024 presidential election. President Paul Kagame won with over 99 percent of the vote.
Ingabire, having previously been the president of the unregistered opposition party United Democratic Forces (Forces Démocratiques Unifiées or FDU-Inkingi), created another party – the Development and Liberty for All (Développement et Liberté pour tous or Dalfa-Umurinzi) – in November 2019. Rwandan authorities have refused to register the party or allow it to take part in elections and have repeatedly arrested, jailed, and harassed its members. Since 2017, five members of these parties have died or disappeared in suspicious circumstances.
In October 2021, seven members of Dalfa-Umurinzi were arrested. Sylvain Sibomana, Alexis Rucubanganya, Hamad Hagenimana, Jean-Claude Ndayishimiye, Alphonse Mutabazi, Marcel Nahimana, and Emmanuel Masengesho were all detained in the days leading up to and following the party’s declared “Ingabire day,” scheduled for October 14. On that day, Ingabire was planning to speak about political repression in Rwanda, including suspicious deaths, killings, disappearances, and abusive prosecutions.
The party members have been held in pretrial detention ever since, though their trial only began in late 2024. Sibomana had previously spent nearly eight years in custody, from 2013 to early 2021. Human Rights Watch has monitored previous trials of these and other opposition members, during which the accused told the court that interrogators had tortured them to coerce confessions.
Théoneste Nsengimana, a journalist who planned to cover Ingabire day, is also being held and tried with the party members. Two other people, Claudine Uwimana and Josiane Ingabire (no relation to Victoire) were also included in the case, with Josiane Ingabire being tried in absentia.
The prosecution bases its accusations, such as conspiracy to incite insurrection, on the group’s acquisition of a book, “Blueprint for Revolution,” written by Srdja Popovic, and participation in a training session organized by the author’s organization, the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies, or CANVAS. The book and training focus on peaceful strategies to resist authoritarianism, such as nonviolent protest, noncooperation, boycott, and mobilization. The prosecution is using the contents of the book and training, including the use of Jitsi—an encrypted online communication platform—and the use of pseudonyms during the training, as evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
The charges include “spreading false information or harmful propaganda with intent to cause a hostile international opinion against the Rwandan government” and “formation of or joining a criminal association.”
On June 17, the court summoned Ingabire to appear on June 19 because she had been cited during the trial. After she was questioned in court about the accused and their statements, the three-judge panel, allegedly unsatisfied, ordered the prosecutor to investigate Ingabire directly and ordered for her to be detained.
Social protests and mobilizations offer people the opportunity to communicate legitimate complaints and grievances to the authorities in a nonviolent way. Governments have a responsibility to create a safe and enabling environment for individuals and groups to exercise their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, of expression, and of association, Human Rights Watch said.
The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front tightly controls the country’s political space through a combination of legal restrictions, surveillance, and intimidation of opposition figures and independent voices. Critics often face harassment, imprisonment, or exile. In recent years some political detainees have died in unclear circumstances. Civil society and media operate under heavy constraints, with red lines around criticism of the government or security forces or straying from official talking points about the genocide.
Ingabire’s rearrest comes as Rwanda faces heightened international scrutiny over military support to the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo, accusations that have led to suspended Western aid and sanctions by the United States and European Union.
“It is beyond troubling that Rwandan authorities consider a training on how to peacefully resist authoritarianism as the formation of a criminal group and fomenting unrest,” Mudge said. “Instead of detaining the opposition members and putting them on trial, the government should open the country’s democratic space to much needed political discourse.”
Resurgence of Suicide Bombings in Nigeria’s Boko Haram Conflict
On the night of June 21, a woman detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) in a crowd of people at a fish market in Konduga town, about 25 km southeast of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital in Nigeria. The attack, which reportedly killed at least 12 people, is the first in the region in 2025 after a series of suicide bombings in 2024.
The conflict between Nigerian security forces and Islamist insurgent groups, referred to as Boko Haram, has now entered its 16th year. It has been marked by widespread violence, including suicide bombings, often carried out by women who conceal explosives beneath their hijabs, a traditional covering widely worn by Muslim women in the northern region.
Since Nigeria’s first recorded suicide bombing in 2011, Boko Haram has carried out hundreds of such attacks, many targeting civilian gatherings. In 2017 alone, there were more than 127 suicide bombings and attempted suicide bombings, according to data from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
However, in the years leading up to 2024, incidents of suicide bombings had waned. Some analysts had attributed this decline to military successes and the fragmentation of Boko Haram into rival factions, most notably the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS). ISWAP adopted a different strategy from the original Boko Haram group, favoring targeted attacks against security agencies and military installations rather than civilians. Over time, infighting between the factions significantly weakened both groups, particularly JAS, whose leader, Abubakar Shekau, died in 2021.
President Bola Tinubu, in a statement posted on X, said the suicide bomb attack was an attempt to spread fear and directed the security forces to “rout the remnants of Boko Haram.” Over the years the Nigerian military has repeatedly claimed to have defeated Boko Haram despite ongoing attacks against civilians and military targets.
While no group has claimed responsibility, the latest suicide bombing and others since 2024 raise concerns for the safety of people in the region, particularly amid reports of a resurgence of the JAS faction, which has often carried out brutal attacks targeting civilians.
Insurgent groups should end all targeted and indiscriminate attacks against civilians. Nigerian authorities should take decisive action to hold those responsible for these abuses to account.
Human Rights Council Members Should Reject Eritrea’s Bid to End Scrutiny
The government of Eritrea has been working the corridors of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to try to end the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on Eritrea.
In an clear attempt to scuttle the annual mandate renewal resolution, the Eritrean delegation recently presented a resolution that would terminate the mandate.
In the resolution, Eritrea presents arguments that are easy to dismiss: that the mandate has no impact, that the special rapporteur cannot even access the country and is doing the bidding of the states who pushed for its creation, not the Eritrean people.
The Eritrean government itself is responsible for the lack of rights progress.
Throughout Eritrea’s time under Council scrutiny, and during its two terms as Council member, the government has proven unwilling to improve its dismal rights record, blocked the special rapporteur’s access to the country, and consistently refused to engage with him.
Eritrean authorities have systematically ignored recommendations by international and regional rights mechanisms, including the special rapporteur, notably refusing to release its countless detainees disappeared into its horrific prison system, or to guarantee freedom of opinion and expression, assembly, religious freedoms, among other grave abuses.
The government has also maintained its indefinite national service policy, punished draft evaders and their families, and failed to stop abuses against conscripts, including children.
Eritrea allows no independent media, civil society organizations, or political opposition parties to operate leaving the executive largely unchecked.
In this context, the work of the special rapporteur shines a much needed light on the situation in Eritrea, and support to Eritrean civil society.
Eritrea is one of the only countries to have never accepted a visit by a UN independent human rights expert. That signals the need for closer scrutiny, not an indicator that a mandate should end.
If Eritrea wants to end or ease UN scrutiny, it should take meaningful steps to improve the rights situation and implement the recommendations of the special rapporteur.
Until then, in the face of flagrant and persistent violations, total disregard for human rights mechanisms, and erasure of domestic civic space, Council members, particularly African states, should stand firm against Eritrea’s efforts to set a negative precedent and undermine the Council’s work and should instead support the renewal of the special rapporteur’s mandate.
Kazakhstan: Abused Woman Facing Murder Conspiracy Retrial
(Berlin, June 24, 2025) – A woman from western Kazakhstan who experienced two decades of severe domestic abuse by her former husband is to be retried for allegedly conspiring to murder him, Human Rights Watch said today. The first attempt to prosecute the woman, Elvira Erkebayeva, 41, was declared a mistrial on May 19, 2025, and exposed how police in Kazakhstan failed to protect her from domestic violence. A new jury was selected on June 23, 2025.
Police in Uralsk, western Kazakhstan detained Erkebayeva on February 26, 2024, following her apparent attempts to purchase a firearm. Erkebayeva, who is being held in detention and faces 15 years to life in prison, never actually purchased or otherwise acquired a firearm. She had, however, approached the police at least twice in early 2024 about her abusive former husband, against whom she had obtained multiple protection orders, which the police failed to enforce.
“This case demonstrates the perverse and unjust consequences that can flow from police failure to adequately respond to cases of domestic violence,” said Viktoriya Kim, assistant Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Police should have investigated and prosecuted her former husband for years of violence, but instead Erkebayeva, who should be receiving support as a survivor of violent crime, finds herself facing prosecution.”
Erkebayeva and her lawyers maintain that any wish to buy a gun stemmed from her need for protection and not an intent to kill her former husband, who has not been harmed and did not file any criminal complaint. According to her lawyer, Tamara Sarsenova, and local women’s rights activists, Erkebayeva experienced over 20 years of relentless domestic abuse, including beatings, strangulation, death threats, verbal humiliation, and absolute control over her movements.
For many years, Erkebayeva was apparently afraid to report the abuse even after her divorce in 2013, fearing retaliation by her former husband, who continued to share their home with her.
On March 1, 2024, the police reported that they had prevented a “contract killing,” stating that a wife “who did not want to share property with her husband” had ordered his murder. Erkebayeva has been held in a pretrial detention center since her arrest.
The indictment against Erkebayeva alleges that in 2023, she attempted to “find a firearm” and, with the help of an accomplice, planned to kill her former husband. The accomplice reportedly found a potential hitman, who reported them to the police, and the authorities then opened an investigation.
Erkebayeva’s former husband had threatened to kill her and prevent her from ever seeing her children, now ages 13 and 17. Sarsenova told Human Rights Watch that, on one occasion, he had stripped her naked and ejected her from the house. In a separate episode in 2022, he threw boiling water in her face.
The NeMolchiKz Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of survivors of sexual and domestic violence across Kazakhstan and is closely following the case, said that Erkebayeva sought protection from police in mid-2023, but they failed to take meaningful action to protect her.
She made at least two written requests in January and February 2024 for protection orders from the police, which they granted but failed to enforce when her former husband violated the orders. Nor did they pursue charges for his violence against Erkebayeva or refer her to services, such as shelter, for people experiencing domestic violence.
The sustained and relentless violence Erkebayeva experienced at the hands of her former husband has taken a heavy toll on her health and mental well-being. She testified during her first aborted trial that she had attempted to end her life on several occasions.
In February 2024, Erkebayeva underwent a psychological assessment arranged by her lawyers. The expert concluded that “constant emotional tension, the need to withstand for a long time unreasonable and unpredictable aggressive reactions of [Erkebayeva’s] husband and inaction of the police, who she [Erkebayeva] repeatedly addressed [for help], triggered repeated suicide attempts.”
On May 19, the judge dismissed the jury on the grounds that several members had experienced domestic violence and might not be impartial. Rather than dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning that she could not be retried due to the due process prohibition on double jeopardy, the judge ordered a new trial.
The repeated efforts to prosecute Erkebayeva indicate fundamental flaws in the case and raise fair trial concerns, as well as concerns about the criminalization and prosecution of victims of domestic violence, Human Rights Watch said.
The years of violence Erkebayeva experienced are a stark example of how hard it can be for Kazakh women to overcome barriers to reporting such crimes. The barriers include stigma, social pressure, and fear of retaliation, as well as a well-founded fear that the authorities will not provide any meaningful help, as was Erkebayeva’s experience.
If Kazakh authorities persist with Erkebayeva’s prosecution, they should ensure that it is conducted in strict compliance with international human rights norms. This includes ensuring that Erkebayeva is able to present a meaningful defense that would include the context of domestic violence. Erkebayeva’s and witnesses’ reports of the abuse she experienced and her inability to seek help should be fully admissible and given proper weight in any determination of guilt or sentencing. Given the failure of the authorities to secure a timely trial, Erkebayeva should be released pending and during the trial and enabled to get the medical and psychological support she needs.
Domestic violence is not treated as a serious crime in Kazakhstan, despite the government’s claims that it takes the problem seriously. In 2024, Kazakhstan adopted legislative amendments that strengthened legal protections for women and children, including domestic violence survivors. However, the changes to the law stopped short of criminalizing domestic violence as a standalone offense or providing enhanced support to victims in domestic violence cases. Protections for women from abuse under the existing laws are insufficient and poorly enforced.
The Kazakh government’s failure to adequately protect women against domestic violence and ensure their access to justice violates Kazakhstan’s international human rights obligations, including under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Kazakhstan’s international partners should call on the Kazakh authorities to take urgent action to prevent and end impunity for domestic violence, including through prevention efforts, legislative reform, police training and accountability, and services for victims.
“The circumstances of Erkebayeva’s prosecution, and the multiple police failures to protect her and to ensure the system works as intended, sends a chilling message to survivors of domestic violence across Kazakhstan,” Kim said. “The Kazakh government should ensure that survivors of domestic violence receive timely protection and support, not criminal prosecution.”
Prominent Critic of Guinean Junta Abducted, Tortured
In Guinea early on Saturday morning, at least a half-dozen heavily armed men broke into the home of Mohamed Traoré, a prominent lawyer and former bar association president, assaulted him and his daughter, and then forced him into a car and drove away. Traoré had been publicly critical of the country’s military junta, which took power in September 2021.
After his abduction in the capital, Conakry, Traoré was found hours later with multiple marks of torture in Bangouyah, about 170 kilometers away, by local residents. The bar association reported that he was being treated in a health facility.
The abduction and assault fit a pattern of government security force attacks on the junta’s critics, dissidents, and political opponents.
On Monday, in response to the attack, the Guinean bar association adopted a series of measures, including a two-week boycott of all court hearings and the withdrawal of all lawyers sitting on the transitional institutions established by the junta since the coup. The bar association also announced it would file a complaint.
The bar association, in a June 21 statement, said that during his captivity, Traoré was “whipped” up to 500 times, his face “forcibly covered with a garment in an apparent attempt to asphyxiate him,” and that his abductors threatened him with death.
The attack may have been a retaliation for Traoré’s resignation from the National Transitional Council (NTC), the leading transitional body of the junta, in which he served as an adviser since 2022. Traoré announced his resignation in January citing the NTC’s failure to meet the established deadline to return Guinea to civilian rule, announced for December 31, 2024.
The deadline’s passing sparked opposition protests that paralyzed Conakry in January. Following the protests, officials announced new electoral timelines. On April 1, Guinea’s military leader, Mamady Doumbouya, set September 21, 2025, as the date for a needed constitutional referendum. On May 12, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah announced that presidential elections would take place in December 2025.
Since taking power, the junta has cracked down on the political opposition, media, and peaceful dissent. It suspended independent media outlets, arbitrarily arrested journalists, and forcibly disappeared and allegedly tortured prominent political activists.
Guinea’s authorities should promptly, credibly, and impartially investigate Traoré’s abduction and torture. They should also publicly denounce abuses against critics and opponents and ensure that those committing them are held to account.
Mozambique: Armed Group’s Child Abductions Surge in North
(Johannesburg) – An armed group linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) has ramped up abductions of children in northern Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, Human Rights Watch said today. Most of the abducted children are being used for transporting looted goods, forced labor, forced marriages, and taking part in the fighting.
National civil society groups and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report that such kidnappings are on the rise. While the armed group, locally known as Al-Shabab, released some of the children they abducted earlier this year, a number of children remain missing; those who have returned to their communities struggle with reintegration.
“The surge in abductions of children in Cabo Delgado adds to the horrors of Mozambique’s conflict,” said Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Al-Shabab needs to spare children from the conflict and immediately release those who have been abducted.”
In May and June 2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed nine people in Mozambique, including residents of Cabo Delgado, journalists, civil society activists, and a UN official, all of whom expressed concern about the resurgence of kidnappings. “In recent days, 120 or more children have been abducted,” said Abudo Gafuro, executive director at Kwendeleya, a national organization that monitors attacks and provides support to victims.
On January 23, 2025, Al-Shabab attacked the village of Mumu, in Mocímboa da Praia district, and abducted four girls and three boys. During Al-Shabab’s subsequent retreat, two children were released, but five remain missing. In March, the armed group abducted six children in Chibau to carry looted goods; four were released the following day. On May 3, Al-Shabab abducted a girl in the village of Ntotwe, Mocímboa da Praia district; on May 11, they kidnapped six girls and two boys near Magaia village in Muidumbe district.
When Al-Shabab fighters “enter or attack certain areas, they tend to abduct children,” said Augusta Iaquite, coordinator at the Association of Women in Legal Careers in Cabo Delgado. “They take them to train them and later turn them into their own fighters.”
When children who have been abducted return to the community, there are few resources to help them reintegrate, Human Rights Watch said. “The country needs a clear strategy on what to do when a child, especially one that has been rescued, returns,” said Benilde Nhalivilo, executive director at the Civil Society Forum for Children’s Rights.
Civil society organizations have called on Mozambique’s government to fulfill the country’s obligations under domestic and international law to protect the nation’s children.
Mozambique’s Constitution and the 2008 Law for the Promotion and Protection of Children's Rights enshrine the state’s duty to protect children from all forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse. Additionally, Mozambique is a party to various international and regional instruments that guarantee children’s rights, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Both explicitly prohibit the abduction, recruitment, and exploitation of children. The UN Optional Protocol to the Child Rights Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict, ratified by Mozambique in 2004, prohibits non-state armed groups from recruiting or using children under 18.
Under customary international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, children are entitled to special respect and protection, and recruiting or using children under the age of 15 to participate actively in hostilities is a war crime.
Mozambican authorities should seek to prevent further abductions, investigate existing cases and fairly prosecute those responsible, and ensure proper support for victims, Human Rights Watch said. Rescued children need medical care, psychosocial assistance, and reintegration mechanisms that provide for their protection and well-being.
“Mozambique’s government needs to take concrete actions to safeguard children and prevent armed groups from using them as tools of conflict,” Budoo-Scholtz said. “There is a need to ensure that there are robust reintegration measures so that the children are not further ostracized when they come back to the community.”
Belarus Releases Opposition Politician, 13 Other Political Prisoners
Last Saturday, Belarusian authorities released by presidential pardon 14 prisoners, all jailed as a result of politically motivated prosecutions, and transferred them to neighboring Lithuania. They include prominent opposition politician Siarhei Tsikhanouski and independent journalists and activists.
Some of those released held foreign passports, including from the United States, Japan, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Sweden.
More than 1,000 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus.
Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger who aspired to become a presidential candidate, was arrested by the authorities in the run up to the 2020 election. His wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, ran for president in his stead and is recognized by many as the winner of the elections rigged by Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who has occupied the president’s office in Belarus since its establishment in 1994. Since then, Sviatlana became an opposition leader in exile and a tireless advocate for her husband, who was sentenced to prison for 19 years and 6 months on bogus criminal charges.
The prisoner release took place the day US Special Envoy Keith Kellogg visited Belarus’ capital, Minsk, and was apparently negotiated by Washington.
Captured on camera, the moment Sviatlana and Sirhei embraced each other after five years apart is truly moving. But the families of at least 1,177 other political prisoners did not find their loved ones among the released.
Since July 2024, Lukashenka has released 314 political prisoners, apparently hoping to thaw his relations with the European Union and the United States. However, politically motivated repression in Belarus continues, and prisoners regularly face ill-treatment and incommunicado confinement.
Tsikhanouski and other released prisoners attested to the prolonged isolation, psychological pressure, and other inhumane treatment that they suffered in Belarusian prisons. Tsikhanouski’s children did not immediately recognize him due to his severe weight loss: a result of malnutrition behind bars.
Those remaining imprisoned and isolated from the world include Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate and founder of Viasna human rights group; Ales Bialiatski, opposition politician Maria Kalesnikava; and journalist Ihar Losik. Some political prisoners have died behind bars, including from denial of adequate medical care.
We don’t know yet what Lukashenka received or hopes to receive in return for releasing Tsikhanouski and the other 13 prisoners. But people’s lives should not be a currency for political bargaining. Belarusian authorities should immediately release all those prosecuted for exercising their human rights and freedoms.
UK Social Security Plans Will Harm People With Disabilities
The United Kingdom government has just published draft legislation seeking to “reform” key disability-related aspects of its complex social security system. While the government claims its moves “will protect the most vulnerable,” in reality its plans to cut £4.5 billion in disability-linked benefits by 2030 will have a devastating impact on people’s rights.
The bill proposes freezing, until 2030, the amount of additional health-related support for people with qualifying health conditions or disabilities as part of their Universal Credit payments, the UK’s main social security program. New claimants will only receive half the health-related amount (although the standard component of Universal Credit payments, that all recipients get, will go up). The bill also seeks to freeze rates of an older benefit that supports people who have limited capability for work because of qualifying health conditions or disability.
The bill would also raise eligibility barriers for the daily care component of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a key disability-linked benefit. The current qualifying test for PIP—already considered inhumane and degrading because of how it quantifies people’s ability to perform daily tasks like dressing, using the toilet, bathing, and preparing food—will be further tightened if this bill becomes law.
The government’s own analysis shows that up to 800,000 people will no longer be eligible to receive PIP and that the changes could lead to 200,000 more people (50,000 of them children) in poverty by 2030. Organizations working on social security and disability rights, including Citizens Advice, the Disability Charities Consortium, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, have warned of the poverty the cuts will create.
Last month, the chair of the UK Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee wrote to the government asking it to delay these plans, given the risk of poverty. Earlier this week, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty and Inequality published a report recommending the government abandon the proposals. The government is proceeding anyway.
The government says it will protect those it considers to have the highest support needs, or nearing the end of their life, ensuring they do not lose their PIP eligibility and continue to receive the full health-related element of Universal Credit. But that is cold comfort to hundreds of thousands people with disabilities anxious about the impact of losing thousands of pounds a year.
Parliamentarians should reject the planned legislation, and be clear that budget savings, however desirable, should not come at the cost of the rights—in particular the right to social security—of people with disabilities. Human dignity must come first.
Pride Banned, Hate Authorized in Hungary
Police in Hungary have banned lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Hungarians and their supporters from peacefully assembling to celebrate Pride, while instead allowing a hate group to march on the same day.
A separate LGBT related event, planned to coincide with the official Budapest Pride march on June 28, was banned by police three times. Organizers challenged the ban at the Supreme Court, but despite twice ruling in their favor and ordering police to reexamine their request, the Court ultimately upheld the ban.
In response to authorities’ attempts to thwart freedom of assembly, Budapest’s Lord Mayor announced on June 17 that the city, alongside co-organizers the Rainbow Mission, would host the official Pride as a municipal event—one that does not require police approval. Police issued a ban on the event anyway, while the Lord Mayor insisted that Pride will go ahead on June 28. The legal status of the June 28 Pride remained unclear at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, a far-right extremist and known hate group notified police on June 16 that it would hold its own assembly on the same day as Pride and along the traditional Pride route. But unlike the peaceful Pride event, police have not banned this march.
The Hungarian government has a long history of discriminating and fueling hatred against LGBT people. A controversial 2021 law bans any public LGBT expression as harmful to children, wrongly conflating LGBT identities with pedophilia.
New draconian legal reforms underpin authorities’ recent attempts to ban Pride and other LGBT events, including constitutional changes in April under the guise of prioritizing “child protection” over most fundamental rights, and amendments to the Assembly Act in March.
These bans and discriminatory laws have drawn international criticism. In May, 20 European Union member states issued a joint statement condemning Hungary's legal measures that ban Budapest Pride and urged the European Commission to deploy its full rule-of-law enforcement tools unless Budapest revises the measures.
Pride is more than a march—it’s a celebration of love, diversity, equality, and the freedom to be yourself. In Hungary, that freedom is under attack. The right to peaceful assembly is a cornerstone of democracy. Hungary’s government is dangerously treating it as optional.
Hungary’s leaders should reverse these bans, repeal discriminatory laws, and ensure Budapest Pride can proceed safely and visibly. Pride is not a threat; hate is.
Vietnam: Free Prominent Journalist at Medical Risk
(New York) – The Vietnamese government should immediately release the imprisoned journalist Le Huu Minh Tuan and allow him to obtain medical treatment in Vietnam or abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. Tuan’s family says that he is suffering from internal hemorrhoids causing severe bleeding and needs urgent care.
“Le Huu Minh Tuan is among a long list of Vietnamese imprisoned for their peaceful opinions,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “By wrongly prosecuting him and then not providing the health care he needs, the Vietnamese authorities are culpable for his worsening condition.”
Tuan, 36, is a member of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam. He has written about the democracy protests in Hong Kong and politics in Vietnam. He has stated that he wants “to campaign for a better society by contributing a critical voice on every front of life.”
Police arrested Tuan in Quang Nam province on June 12, 2020, and charged him with “making, storing, disseminating, or propagandizing information, materials, and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” under article 117 of the penal code. In January 2021 he was sentenced to 11 years in prison, along with fellow journalists Pham Chi Dung and Nguyen Tuong Thuy.
Since he was imprisoned, Tuan has suffered periodically from bloody bowel movements, abdominal pain, and other gastrointestinal problems. The United States Lantos Human Rights Commission reported that in January 2024 Tuan described severe weight loss, indigestion, numbness in both calves, insomnia, dizziness, lightheadedness, confusion, chest pain, and difficulty breathing.
Under rule 27 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules), “[a]ll prisons shall ensure prompt access to medical attention in urgent cases. Prisoners who require specialized treatment or surgery shall be transferred to specialized institutions or to civil hospitals.”
“The Vietnamese authorities need to be held accountable for denying Le Huu Minh Tuan adequate health care,” Gossman said. “They should immediately free Tuan and all other prisoners wrongfully detained.”
EU: Suspend Trade Agreement with Israel
(Brussels) – The European Union should immediately suspend its trade agreement with Israel as long as Israel’s atrocity crimes persist, Human Rights Watch and over 110 organizations and trade unions said in a joint statement on June 19, 2025. This would be the first measure taken by the EU in the last two years to ensure some accountability for Israeli authorities’ egregious abuses of Palestinians.
EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss the EU-Israel Association Agreement on June 23, when they will receive an assessment of Israel’s compliance with article 2 of the agreement, which qualifies “respect for human rights and democratic principles” in “internal and international policy” as an “essential element” of the agreement. The review was initiated on May 20, when 17 out of 27 EU foreign ministers supported a proposal by the Dutch government. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner and suspending the trade pillar of the agreement would reinstate tariffs on bilateral trade.
“As parties to the Genocide Convention, all EU states are bound to ‘employ all reasonable means’ to stop Israeli atrocities, but, instead, many EU states have stood by, quiet and at risk of complicity,” said Claudio Francavilla, acting EU director at Human Rights Watch. “EU foreign ministers shouldn’t let the escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran take focus away from the ongoing extermination and apartheid against the Palestinians; they should suspend the trade pillar of the EU-Israel Association Agreement without further delay.”
Review of the EU-Israel agreement is taking place as Israeli authorities continue their military operations in Gaza, during which they have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. Israeli authorities have also flouted three binding orders by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention. The court’s measures included requiring Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance, and prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide.
Human Rights Watch has long called on states to use their leverage to press Israel to halt its abuses and comply with the ICJ’s orders. As parties to the UN Genocide Convention, all EU member states have an obligation to “employ all means reasonably available to them, so as to prevent genocide so far as possible.” That obligation arises as soon as a state learns, or should normally have learned, of a serious risk that genocide may be committed. A definitive determination that genocide is already underway is not required, as Human Rights Watch set out in an April 2025 intervention challenging the UK government’s continued licensing of military equipment used by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The capacity of a state to influence the actors at risk of committing genocide weigh substantially on how courts assess their international responsibility for failing to prevent genocide. This includes factors such as geographic proximity, political and other links, and the means available to the state to exert influence. When considering this responsibility, the ICJ has held that states that have “means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harboring specific intent” are “under a duty to make such use of these means.”
Israeli authorities have also failed to comply with the obligations from a landmark July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, and in a September 2024 UN General Assembly resolution largely endorsing its content. The ICJ found Israel’s occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be illegal and marred by serious abuses – including apartheid and racial segregation – and said that it should be dismantled, along with Israel’s illegal settlements. A March 2025 report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented a significant expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have ratcheted up repression, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians at a scale not seen there since 1967 and killing over 930 since October 2023.
In its advisory opinion, the ICJ also referenced the obligation of all states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention – including all EU member states – “to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.” The advisory opinion also said that states should take steps to prevent trade relations that “assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel” in the occupied territories, including with relation to “economic or trade dealings.”
Yet, amid sharp divisions, the EU has not adopted any measure to pressure Israeli authorities to comply with the laws of war and prevent genocide.
Unlike measures that require unanimity – such as targeted sanctions, an EU-wide arms embargo, or the suspension of the whole EU-Israel Association Agreement – the suspension of the agreement’s trade pillar would require the support of a qualified majority of EU member states. The suspension, first requested by Spain and Ireland in February 2024, would not result in a complete trade ban but would reinstate tariffs on bilateral trade.
In November, EU foreign ministers received a (recently leaked) report by the then-EU special representative for human rights, Olof Skoog, compiling findings by independent UN bodies and international courts on Israel’s abuses throughout the occupied territory. Shortly afterward, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader who has since been killed.
At that time, EU foreign ministers could have taken concrete measures, such as a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Instead, they reconvened an official meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council with their Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar.
During that meeting, held in February amid a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the EU said the Israeli government should take a number of actions, including implementing the ICJ binding orders to allow unhindered provision of humanitarian aid at scale throughout Gaza and ending Israel’s illegal settlement policy in the West Bank. Israeli authorities defied those calls, and instead imposed a total siege on Gaza and approved new West Bank settlements.
A UN conference on a two-state solution and Middle East peace, set to be held from June 17–20, was postponed due to the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran. In a June 5 letter, Human Rights Watch urged EU member states to use the conference as an opportunity to move beyond repeated affirmations of support for human rights and international law, and toward concrete, time-bound measures – such as suspending arms transfers and bilateral deals and banning trade with settlements – to ensure their enforcement.
In fact, with the exception of notable initiatives by individual member states and targeted sanctions against some violent Israeli settlers, EU action has largely been paralyzed by the European Commission’s reluctance and opposition by a core group of governments – chiefly Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and Austria, but also Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania – creating a sense of impunity among Israeli authorities.
The ongoing review of the Association Agreement is the closest the EU has come to holding Israeli authorities to account; however, the review will have little practical effect if not followed by the suspension of the trade pillar, Human Rights Watch said.
“For nearly 21 months now, the EU has watched escalating atrocities against Palestinians without taking any real measure to uphold international law,” Francavilla said. “Reviewing and suspending the agreement is a chance for the bloc to salvage what’s left of the credibility of its commitment to human rights and international law, and to finally take action to respond to Israeli authorities ongoing acts of genocide.”